


505

by Zymm



Category: Red Queen - Victoria Aveyard
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-05-09 06:55:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14711255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zymm/pseuds/Zymm
Summary: ‘Oh, when you look at me like that, my darling, what did you expect? I probably still adore you with your hands around my neck.’Maven wonders how long he can point blame at his mother, when even his soul knows he is wicked.





	505

**Author's Note:**

> Just finished War Storm, and I’m dying. Completely dying. I have way too many emotions, and I’m  
> Enjoying writing angsty Maven. 
> 
> Lyrics are for 505 by Arctic Monkeys, which I thought was rather fitting.

The walls gleam beautifully, darts of radiant sun shooting through the diamondglass to paint the corridor below. It creates a rainbow of color, simply breathtaking in the wide expanse. It’s a sight for sore eyes. 

Maven, for once, is captivated by it. How many times had he walked through these halls, not noticing its beauty? He’d been so preoccupied that he’d stopped appreciating the marvel he lived in, ruled in.  _ How silly of him. _

__ He stops to reach out, to touch a gleaming surface, hoping to see the rays paint across his pale skin. 

Instead, his hand moves through the wall like water, rippling its surface.

That should’ve been his first indication, but the shock and terror had taken his mind away for the time being. His castle was a simple mirage before him.

Someone growls beside him, and Maven doesn’t even catch the words but he understands nonetheless. The voice is achingly familiar, and it sets a fire ablaze inside him, a rush of emotions that takes the air from his lungs.

It’s Cal walking beside him, poking him with the edge of a hefty firearm. The rays catch his angular features, bathing them in gorgeous hues of fire. It’s as if he’s a bender of light, painting himself for the world to fawn at. His hair is smoothed back neatly, and he looks positively kingly.

But he’s dressed in a servant’s garb, and it’s then that Maven knows this is all of his own making, that it’s not as it seems. Part of him wants to lash out, to grab his brother by the collar, though he older, taller, and broader. But the overwhelming part of him, the sly, true king, tells him to let curiosity take the reigns. 

“Where are we going, brother?” Maven asks calmly, as if it’s always been this way. As if his brother was born into the garb he wears, born into the role it damns its wearer. It’s almost laughable, and Maven has to swallow the chuckle that bubbles in his throat.

The look Cal gives him is even wilder- it’s the twist of his lips, a scowl on his handsome features. Maven is sure he’s never seen his brother make the face before, which makes it all more interesting.

“We share no kin.” Cal scoffs, as if the thought itself is simply disgusting to him. Him, a servant. Maven looks on in wonder, shaking his head with a bewildered chuckle.

“That wasn’t the question.”  Maven responded, grinning sharply.

Cal never answered his question; instead, they found their destination in front of them. Maven didn’t remember the end of the hallway being here. It had simply came into existence whenever the time came.

Two Sentinels stood stoically, and Cal began to chatter with them, his voice angry and commanding. Maven watched, amused. His brother would get himself killed, talking to a royal guard like that, only being a servant. He wouldn’t mind seeing them rip his older brother apart before him.

After all, Maven had caught on by now that this wasn’t reality. 

Perhaps it was his mother, back to torment him even in sleep. Or death. Maybe his time had finally come, and he was in hell, just like he had expected. Maybe the gods were real, and they had damned him to this strange life beyond life. It was an interesting idea.

To his shock, the Sentinels seemed to cower under Cal’s strong words. Perhaps even beyond death, his brother carried power. It would figure- even in death, he couldn’t escape his brother’s overwhelming shadow.

The two guards hastily moved away from the doorway they flanked, very still and calm beneath their masks. Maven grinned up at them as he passed.

“Go.” Cal said simply, gesturing to the door, as if it were obvious what Maven was supposed to do. Maven frowned, his brow furrowing. His brother always lead the way, forged the paths- Maven was used to following  _ his  _ steps, and he expected this to be no different.

“I can’t follow you in there.” Cal answered, sensing his hesitation. To Maven’s amazement, his cheeks flushed pale white, and he almost looked- embarrassed? His brother? Surely not. But the once-prince was looking at his feet with new found interest, practically squirming in his uniform. What a weird world, indeed.

Maven shook it off, closing a hand around the cold doorknob. It felt so real underneath his fingertips, cold and steely, hard and unforgiving. It rooted him to his mind, to his real self. 

He slowly pushed the door ajar, expecting something to be on the other side, something awful and beyond comprehension. Perhaps his mother, waiting for him to be beside her again, reunited in hell for all eternity. The thought makes his skin crawl.

But instead it is a living quarter; an extravagant one, to be exact. Or at least it had the ambition to be- the walls were a beautiful, dark paint that shone like a starry night. The carpet was an even deeper shade of purple, and his bare feet felt soft and embraced as he stepped into it. The room itself had few furnishings but the things it did have- a desk, a bed, a bookcase- were ornate, streaked with stems of swirling gold. 

The room was sad, though; it was sparse, as if the inhabitant had rid it of everything except the bare necessities. It lacked the lavish, grossly extravagant feel of every other room in Whitefire. Regardless, it was a room meant for importance.

A Queen.

The thought twists his stomach, and for once, Maven has the decency to feel scared. With his feet buried in the carpet, his body frozen in the stranger’s room, he worries. Worries for the unknown.

The bathroom door is ajar.

He waits for his mother’s voice, readies himself for the feel of prying fingers in his head. By Maven’s later years of life, it hardly even hurt anymore. He was so used to the pain of the snipping, the adjusting, the manipulation in his head that it hardly felt like an anomaly anymore. In a sick, weird way, it almost felt like home to him.

But it is not his mother’s voice who beckens.

“I won’t bite.” 

And Maven moves faster than he thought possible, faster than his heart even has a chance to beat, because he is a possessed man. There are no fingers in his head but yet Mare Barrow has the ability to have fingers in all of him- his soul, his head, his conscious- even when she’s across the goddamn world. 

And she’s there.

She’s in a bathtub, the water covering her to just under her collarbone, somehow modest yet sinful at the same time. It’s just like Mare to him- a picture of innocence but yet a creature of corruption at the same time. Her hair is swept to the top of her head, and her face is eyeing him with little interest- but Maven has too much. He drinks her in, her small hands gripping the porcelain sides, her pointed chin tipping upwards, always above him. Always.

She’s so, so real, and it sets fire inside him. He wants to kill her, wants this all done with, just as much as he wants to join her.

“You look sick, Mavey.” 

Mare’s words shock him, especially the last word she used.  _ Mavey. _

It sounds like poison on her tongue, and he wants to make her regret its use. It was never her word to use. It never will be.

But there isn’t anger on her face, instead that same, blank disinterest. She taps her fingers quietly on the porcelain, muffled and contained by flesh against tub. 

“You look well.” Maven responds, forcing a thin smile to his face. He knows she hates his smiles, because they no longer come from joy. But this Mare doesn’t react to it.

“A bath, I see. I didn’t realize we could waste such precious water on your kind.” 

He throws the insult to her, expecting it to make her light up. If there’s one thing Maven truly loves in this world, it is seeing Mare light up, seeing the rage manifest itself into something even she could never pray to control. It is beautiful, and he hopes one day it cooks him alive.

“Water?” Mare asks, confusion dripping from her words. She tilts her head to the side, her chocolate-colored eyes narrowing. She seems genuinely bewildered by his words.

Maven doesn’t know why he didn’t notice it before, he truly doesn’t.

She lifts a hand into the bathtub, pulling it back out slowly.

Down her wrists, around her fingers, spilling from her palm, is not water. It is thicker, moving sluggishly away from her in streams, and it glitters from her fingertips. It is as silver and beautiful as a well-fashioned blade.

Silver blood.

Even Maven has the ability to feel unease, discomfort. 

“Won’t you join me?” Mare asks simply, her voice airy and light; even as she says the words, she stands up, silver blood dripping from her skin. She’s dressed in some uniform underneath, one she didn’t have a moment ago, and it’s red, red as the dawn. Maven doesn’t even have time to wonder, because his feet are already moving and all he can feel is horror.

Maybe this is hell, and maybe he’ll have to live it all with the puppets of Mare and Cal here with him. Maybe this is some god’s way of giving him a fitting ending, with the two people he thought perhaps that he had loved, once upon a time.

He steps into the tub, against his will, and it is warm, warm and inviting. 

He closes his eyes. This isn’t real, isn’t reality; just a making of his mind. He breathes the information in, through himself, until it becomes his reality.

He opens his eyes to see Mare crouched beside him, peering at him with large eyes, as if he is a particularly interesting book. At some point, Cal had materialized behind her, a protective hand on her shoulder. The edges of the world have turned fuzzy, the colors bleeding into one another, bleeding into themselves.

It’s not real, yet it feels like everything.

Mare’s touch feels so real as her fingertips skate up him, coming to rest near his throat.

“Oh, Mare.” Maven says happily, trying to disguise the shake in his voice. He is shaken to his core. “I’ll still adore you with your hands around my neck.”

Her fingertips hesitate, and he watches her face for a few moment. There are flames on her brow, kissing her scalp, caressing her skin. It doesn’t burn her, just gives a deadly halo to frame her innocent features. Maven commits it to memory, even if it is just a dangerous mirage, a captivating picture that is far from reality. It is Mare, and that is enough.

A beautiful smile stretches across her features, but her eyes are wild, untamed passions, and the smile turns wide and deadly. The fingertips stop, and instead her hand plunges into the silver blood, and Maven had never dreamed of the excellent current, the brilliant wavelength that silver blood makes. It is only fitting, that the essence of gods carries the power of one so well.

She fries him alive.

 

\-------------------

 

Maven awakes with a start, and he suppresses the scream that wants desperately to claw its way from his throat, to let loose.

It is real, the world around him, and for once he is sure of it. He is in his giant bed, in his lavish king’s quarters at Whitefire, and he is home. He has nothing to fear, because Mare Barrow and Calore are half a world away for the moment, and he is as safe as he could ever hope to be. 

His sheets are burnt to a crisp around him, and he lies in the ashes. Even though Maven is a burner, and he is used to the unbearable heat, he is still coated in sweat. He tells himself it is simply because of his powers, but he knows, deep down, that it is from fear.

His mother is dead, dead by the hands of Mare Barrow. She did not cause that dream, that so vivid world. Maven did, with his own being, formed in his head when he fell vulnerable.

Maven wonders how long he can point blame at his mother, when even his soul knows he is wicked.


End file.
